Now that we know quarterback Alan Bowman will be leaving the Texas Tech football program, let’s look back at his five best games as a Red Raider and think about what could have been.
It isn’t healthy to ruminate on what could have been in life. But when it comes to Alan Bowman and the Texas Tech football program, it is tough not to.
Clearly the most talented QB to come through Lubbock in the years since Patrick Mahomes was tearing up Big 12 defenses on a weekly basis, he had all the tools necessary to be the next great Red Raider quarterback. Displaying an understanding of the game and excellent accuracy from the moment he was thrust into action in the first game of his true freshman reason, he initially had fans throwing around comparisons to Graham Harrell, the program’s greatest all-time QB.
But unfortunately, a pair of collapsed lung injuries cut that season short and began Bowman’s downfall in Lubbock. Now, he and the Texas Tech football program are both looking for a fresh start leaving the Red Raiders once again searching for an answer at QB.
Next year will mark the fifth season since Mahomes bolted for the NFL after his junior year. Since then, Tech has not had a QB earn either first or second-team All-Big 12 honors. What’s more, in 2018, Bowman became the only Tech QB since Mahomes to earn honorable-mention recognition in the conference.
The assumption was that Bowman was supposed to be the pillar around which the rebuild of Red Raider football was supposed to revolve. In fact, when he took over the program late in 2018, current head coach Matt Wells specifically named Bowman as the reason he felt like tech was going to “reload” rather than “rebuild”.
But in 2020, everyone involved with the program had to face the reality that three major injuries (including a broken collarbone in 2019) had robbed us of the brash, confident, and unshakeable QB that we had seen blossom before our eyes in 2018. In his place was a gunshy, flustered, and cautious player who simply didn’t move the offense the way his ghost was capable of moving it in our memories.
As a result, Tech now has a Jones Stadium-sized hole on the roster at the game’s most important position. Of the four scholarship QBs currently on the roster, you will find only four career starts, all belonging to Henry Colombi, who lost his job to Bowman in the middle of this past season after Bowman had lost it to Colombi to begin with. That’s not terribly reassuring for Red Raider fans.
Certainly, finding the solution at quarterback will be the most pressing issue facing new offensive coordinator Sonny Cumbie this offseason thus making the upcoming spring football session one of the most intriguing in the history of the program. But we will devote more attention to the impending QB battle in the weeks ahead as those practices near.
For today, however, it feels fitting to look back on the Alan Bowman era of Tech football. Bowman ends his time as a Red Raider with a record of 8-6 in games that he started and finished. However, in Big 12 games, his record was just 3-5. For now, though, let’s look back at the five best games of Alan Bowman’s career because they remind us of what could have been were it not for a run of bad luck the likes of which we haven’t seen for a QB in the modern era of Texas Tech football.